101 “That the Hebrew and Babylonian traditions [of the Creation] spring
from a common source is so evident as to require no further proof.
The agreements are too close to be accidental. At the same time the
variations in detail point to an independent elaboration of the
traditions on the part of the Hebrews and Babylonians.... It is in
Babylonia that the thought would naturally arise of making the world
begin with the close of the storms and rains in the spring. The
Terahites must, therefore, have brought those cosmological
traditions with them upon migrating from the Euphrates Valley to the
Jordan district.... The intercourse, political and commercial,
between Palestine and Mesopotamia was uninterrupted.... The
so-called Babylonian exile brought Hebrews and Babylonians once more
side by side.... A direct borrowing [of traditions] from the
Babylonians has not taken place and while the Babylonian records are
in all probability much older than the Hebrew, the latter again
contain elements, as Gunkel has shown, of a more primitive character
than the Babylonian production. This relationship can only
satisfactorily be explained on the assumption that the Hebrews
possessed the traditions upon which Genesis narrative rests, long
before the Babylonian exile, when the story appears, indeed, to have
received its final and present shape.... Yahwe is assigned the rôle
of Bel-Marduk, the division of the work of creation into six days is
definitely made and some further modifications introduced ...”
(Jastrow, _op. cit._ pp. 452-453).
102 Dr. von Luschan (_op. cit._ p. 22) translates this cuneiform sign,
which exists in Babylonian and Assyrian forms, as “Siebeneinigkeit”
and emphasizes the fact that it is employed in the singular form.
The inference that it may designate not only the Pleiades but more
probably Ursa Major corroborates the view that the mystic number
seven impressed itself upon the human mind by its association with
the Septentriones.
103 The fact that the mountain was the symbol of the centre of the earth
and of Bel, throws light upon the meaning of the clay cones which
were “very common votive objects in Babylonia especially in the
earlier periods.” They would have been appropriately used in the
cult of Baal, the personification of the male principle, and are
indeed usually represented as offered by male worshippers. That the
cones in some cases represented the conical bunch of the male
blossom of the palm tree may also be conjectured.
104 An interesting complement to this is furnished by the texts of
oracular messages sent by the goddess Ishtar to King Ashurbanapal
who seems to have been a fervent disciple of the theological school
of Arbela. On one occasion, when the king’s army was in a
predicament, Ishtar appears at night and declares: “I walk in front
of Ashurbanapal, the king, who is the creation of my hands.” On
another occasion the oracle-giving medium reports to the king:
“Ishtar, dwelling in Arbela, came with quivers hung on her right and
left sides with a bow in her hand and girded with a pointed
unsheathed sword. Before thee [_i. e._ the king] she stood and like
the mother that bore thee [with maternal kindness] Ishtar, supreme
among the gods, addressed thee commanding: ‘Be encouraged
[literally, look up] for the fray. Wherever thou art, I am.’ ” The
images of Ashur aiming his arrow and Ishtar with an unsheathed
pointed sword recall the biblical description of the flaming sword
which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life (Genesis
III).
105 It is interesting to trace to the same origin the “quadriga” which
may well have been associated with the “primitive sun”=Polaris,
before supreme sovereignty was transferred to Phœbus, the diurnal
sun, by the votaries of the cult of Light.
106 I am pleased to be able, at the last moment, to insert the following
interesting points personally communicated to me by Dr. Wallis
Budge: In remotest antiquity two mythical mountains marked the two
divisions of the land: Bakhan, situated to the southeast, and Manu,
situated to the northwest. The latter, like the mountain Meru of
India, was the abode of the blessed, towards which the souls of the
dead set out from Abydos and where eternal rest was to be found. The
curious connection between the north=mehta and the west=amenta,
which I have shown to have prevailed in ancient Mexico where the
north is named Mictlan and in Yucatan where Aman signifies north, is
particularly interesting in connection with the exclamation or
exhortation to the soul, constantly met with in the Egyptian Book of
the Dead: Er-amentet=to the hidden land! _i. e._, the northwest.